Merchant Center misrepresentation suspension: causes, fixes and how to request a review

What “misrepresentation” means to Google

Google’s misrepresentation policy covers listings and websites that hide relevant information or mislead shoppers about the products or the business behind them. The policy groups the problems roughly like this:

• Unacceptable business practices: a false business name or contact details, hiding where you’re based or where orders ship from, refusing refunds your own policy promises, or implying an endorsement you don’t have.
• Dishonest pricing and conditions: not showing the full price with taxes and fees, hiding shipping or return costs, or burying fulfilment times and refund limits until after the purchase.
• Unavailable offers: advertising products or promotions you can’t actually deliver.
• Unreliable claims: results or health claims that aren’t realistic.

The first two groups count as egregious: Google can suspend an account for them without warning. For unavailable offers and unreliable claims Google normally sends a warning at least 7 days before suspending.

In practice, most stores that get this suspension aren’t scams. They just make it hard for Google to confirm who they are and what the shopper pays.

The checks that fix most suspensions

Go through every row, on the live store, as a first-time visitor would. A good test: could a stranger find out who you are, how to reach you and what the order will really cost, within a minute?

What Google looks for	Where to check	Common miss
A real business identity	Footer, About page, Merchant Center business information	Store name differs from the business name in Merchant Center; no address anywhere
Working contact details	Contact page, footer	Only a form; email bounces; phone number doesn’t work
Clear returns and refunds	A returns page linked from the footer and product pages	Template text never filled in; return costs or time limits missing
Shipping costs and times	Shipping page, checkout, Merchant Center shipping settings	Site says one thing, Merchant Center another
The full price	Product pages and checkout	Feed price or stock differs from the page; surprise fees at checkout
A trustworthy checkout	Checkout	Payment methods unclear; recurring charges not explained
A finished, working site	The whole store	Placeholder (“lorem ipsum”) text, broken links, empty pages, fake badges

Keep everything consistent: the same business name, address and policies on your site, in Merchant Center and on invoices.

Extra checks on Shopify

These come up again and again in merchant reports:

• Policy pages left as templates. Shopify can generate refund, shipping, privacy and terms pages. They still need your real details, and they need to be linked in the footer.
• Theme leftovers. Demo text and sample images left over from a theme can look like a fake store.
• The Google & YouTube app overriding settings. Some merchants report the app changing tax settings or product IDs (for example to shopify_ZZ_…) after a sync. Check the settings in Merchant Center itself after any app update.
• Prices and stock out of sync. If a sale price or stock change hasn’t reached the feed yet, Google sees a mismatch between the listing and the page.

Extra checks on WooCommerce

• Make sure a feed plugin isn’t sending prices without tax while the store shows prices with tax (or the other way round).
• Check that the returns and shipping pages are reachable without logging in, and aren’t blocked by a maintenance or “coming soon” plugin.

What merchants tell us

We analysed 115 complaints about Google Merchant Center from Shopify App Store reviews, Reddit and Trustpilot (November 2026). A complaint can fall under more than one theme:

Theme	Complaints
Feed or app sync errors	72
Support that didn’t help	45
Vague misrepresentation suspensions with no actionable detail	21
Product identifiers (GTIN, barcodes, product IDs)	9
Shipping, returns or policy pages	9

The pattern is clear: most of the pain is syncs breaking something quietly, followed by suspensions that don’t say what to fix. That’s why it pays to check the storefront directly instead of waiting for Google to tell you.

How to request a review

1. Fix everything first. Work through the whole table above, not just the first thing you find.
2. Open the issue in Merchant Center. The account issue is listed in Merchant Center’s notifications or under the products that need attention. The exact menu names change from time to time.
3. Request the review from the issue itself and confirm you’ve fixed it.
4. Wait for the email. Don’t change the site’s structure, domain or policies while the review runs.

Two warnings:

• Don’t open a new account for the same business to get around the suspension.
• If a linked Google Ads account is also suspended, appeal that one first.

If the review is unsuccessful, Google may make you wait before you can request another one. Use that time to go through the checks again with fresh eyes, or ask someone outside the business to try to buy something and report what confused them.